


M-Theory

by prosodiical



Category: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 16:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: It took me nearly three decades to find Vincent Rankis again.





	M-Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exothermix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exothermix/gifts).



Despite the bare handful of years between us, it took me nearly three decades before I met Vincent Rankis again.

He'd always been a scientist, I'd thought, or someone who had turned to science early and found in it a calling. Vincent had first met me at Cambridge at seventeen, unapologetically brilliant, opinionated and driven, and I'd returned to our familiar stamping ground to conduct my own research and wait to see if I could find him.

I couldn't assume anything, not when it came to Vincent. He was British, well-educated in a manner that suggested a wealthy upbringing, but the latter could easily be the product of a half-dozen lives lived before the one in which we had first met. The former, too, was an assumption, though better sourced; he had not known of me before Cambridge, and what he had shown me before our fight — before I had confronted him and he me — was undoubtedly the most natural I had ever seen him.

That he spoke Russian with the fluency of a native, and no doubt a dozen other languages besides — well, I had the same skills learned over lifetimes, and I didn't know how many he had lived before me. I didn't know how many it had taken him to take up his quantum mirror project, to lose sight of the effect he was having on the world.

The end of the world was becoming closer every lifetime, and I could only hope it was indeed Vincent and his project and the technology he unleashed on the world that was causing it. I could only hope the last-second gamble I had taken had worked. And if it hadn't...

If it hadn't, I wasn't sure what I would do.

In the end, I was a newly-minted professor at twenty-nine when I met Vincent Rankis again. 

I was doing a set of guest lectures at Oxford that week. My gaze slid over the assorted students and there he was, hair already starting to thin, pale grey-green eyes fixed on me for a moment before he frowned down at his notes. I didn't let the recognition cross my face; I did nothing differently at all than I had been planning to, leading a discussion on the elementary topics I covered that soon delved deeper into my current avenues of research.

Vincent cornered me afterwards, intensity focused to a laser-point. "You can't think extra dimensions outside the four of our Einsteinian space-time would affect calculations within," he said without introduction or explanation. If he hadn't confronted me similarly the first time I had met him, I would have thought we had met before. "If what you postulate is correct — _if_ ," he repeated, with added emphasis, a clear dismissal of my too-early attempt to introduce string theory to theoretical physics, "they would be so minuscule as to be insignificant in the scheme of things — "

"Simply because we cannot detect them using electromagnetism?" I asked, before Vincent could work himself into a fully-fledged rant. He must have lived past the advent of string theory in at least one life, but I knew that one of the problems that had puzzled me in Pietrok-112 was how thoroughly he disregarded the developing theories that had sprung from it. Perhaps it hadn't been necessary; perhaps Vincent only wished to examine the properties of this brane-world through his quantum mirror project. But I couldn't forget that ever since I had awoken again, I had searched for meaning for our existence as kalachakra, until Vincent's project had derailed me. I couldn't forget that there was a whole set of individuals who, for all intents and purposes, could travel in time. The mechanism eluded me, much as the mystery of human consciousness it had led me toward before, but when I had heard of M-theory, of the possibility of particle travel through the extradimensional bulk outside the constraint of our time-dimension —

It was a line of research I had started laying the groundwork toward in this life, though the ideas I was proposing were so disconnected from current theory I was seen as an eccentric at best. Vincent's dismissal was nothing new.

"If we cannot detect them, they do not functionally impact the particles we know of," Vincent said, full of brash, youthful certainty. "Say we posit the graviton — a particle that mediates gravitational force. Does it impact our electrons, our protons, our neutrons? No! In fact, if it exists it is so difficult to examine we would need millions of dollars of equipment, a particle accelerator more complex than any currently built — so how could it possibly affect calculations within this four-dimensional spacetime?"

"It wouldn't, generally," I admitted freely. "But when we look to examine particles in the context of the universe as a whole — "

"Unified field theory," Vincent said, eyes narrowing, and he looked at me sharply for a moment. "You're suggesting extrapolation isn't viable without it."

"I'm suggesting," I said mildly, "that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The four-dimensional spacetime we're familiar with could well be a... membrane in some extradimensional soup; understanding the existence of our universe is essential to understanding our existence within it. We could be living in a cyclical universe, for all we know — Lemaître's _l'atome primitif_ had to originate somewhere."

Vincent was examining me. I wasn't sure if I had said enough. "When are your office hours?" he asked abruptly. "Or should I just knock on your door?"

"You know where I — no," I said, feigning exasperation. "I don't know how you think you know where I live. Here." I passed him a business card, with my name, room and hours underneath. "I look forward to hearing from you, Mr...?"

"Vincent," Vincent said. "Vincent Rankis. Nice to meet you, Professor August."

There was nothing like forgiveness in his eyes, but I fathomed there might be understanding, if he knew. A part of me held a grudge, deeply entrenched and furious with it, because the last time I had seen Vincent —

The last time I had seen Vincent was in Pietrok-112, and he had spent nearly two days torturing me. I had been on the verge of breaking until he had entered the room alone, without the persistent guards who so dispassionately sought my secrets from my flesh; instead, he held a nightmarish device in his trembling hands. "I don't want to do this, Harry," he said, perfuse with guilt, "but you leave me no choice. This - this will make you Forget."

I was weakened in flesh and spirit, and knew I would have no chance to change his mind. "Vincent," I said, and my voice cracked, dry. "Please, I — "

We had spent ten years together, there. Vincent had looked, but not asked. I didn't know how I would have responded if he had.

He approached me slowly, gently. He was my tormentor and my friend, a mind that equalled my own; he was my bane, a man so uncontent with letting the future be that he was entirely derailing its course. My thoughts laid still and silent as I watched him come close. He reached out with one hand to cradle my aching jaw. "Harry," he said, quietly, and when I kissed him, he froze.

It was a fraction of a second, but it was enough. Vincent stared at me from the floor, wide-eyed, the whine of his device powering to life as I stopped him from dislodging it from his head —

There was a flash of light, blinding me, and I was shot dead by the guards a moment later. I wasn't sure if it had been long enough.

I wasn't sure if Vincent remembered, but even if he did...

I could hope. This could be our fresh start.

"Yes," I said. "It's nice to meet you, too."


End file.
